Language and Culture by TPreProf 18

TPre-Prof18 

Teacher: Ana Coria

Students: Sofía Arriaga 

                Florencia Doso

                María de los Milagros Muñiz Luaces

                Santiago Espíndola 

The following is an assignment students of the course were given by Prof. Ana Coria as a follow-up activity to the discussion of the unit “Language and Culture” (from their coursebook: Proficiency Masterclass): 

“Imagine you have to design the cover of a book called ´Language and Culture´. Accompany your sample by a short statement reflecting on your choices in terms of language, visuals and other relevant aspects”

Sofía Arriaga

At first, I wanted to make some kind of collage with pictures that represented the main elements of culture and language. But there were too many of them, and it started to appear confusing to me. So, I finally chose to keep it simple and created the book cover you can see above.

I just wrote the title of the book, with typography I liked, found an image I thought reflected the topic perfectly and included my name as author.

In a few words, I could say the book cover I designed intends to express the relationship between language and culture.

The image represents a group of people from different societies having a conversation. By means of language, not only are they able to communicate and exchange ideas with each other, but they can also transmit their values, customs and beliefs since language is a reflection of their own cultures.

In conclusion, language and culture go hand in hand.

Florencia Doso

My intention with this production was to convey an idea of culture as diverse and inclusive. I wanted to represent culture from a female standpoint, portraying different aspects from clothing and aesthetics to usual activities and traditional backgrounds.

Also, I intended to illustrate how varied language is from a strictly linguistic (language as code) aspect. Taking this into account, I included the word “language” in different languages, such as Spanish, Korean, French, Indonesian, Czech, etc.  

Overall, language is and has always been essential not only for communication purposes but also to create identities throughout history.

 María de los Milagros Muñiz Luaces

 

We were asked to design a cover for a book called ‘Language and Culture’. As we know, language is a cultural creation which is constantly changing. To reflect that, I decided to replace the traditional ‘a’ and ‘e’ for the symbols @ and 3, both widely used in text messaging; the former more important nowadays because of its inclusive value.

Culture, on the other hand, is an elusive term since it has numerous definitions. However, some define culture as the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively. Because of that, I chose, for this word, a font specially created by Manu Arranz to pay homage to women who have significantly contributed to make changes in the world, such as Mother Theresa, Rosa Park and Leymah Gbowee to name a few.

In the cover, the two words Language (above) and Culture (below) are connected by a hand, which represents the linguistic unit “y” - connector of addition in Spanish; “and” in English- in sign language. Behind the sign language symbol, there are some images that are used to illustrate the notions of both language and culture. To that purpose, I chose  five people talking, placed just below the word “L@NGU@G3” and, further down, a tree which is, in fact, a collection of icons representing artistic manifestations. 

Lastly, the ‘framing’ of the cover is intended to evoke a ‘flyer’ design, conveying the message that everything is integrated into culture and that it´s part of it.

 
 Santiago Espíndola 

My idea was to keep it as minimalistic as posible; but, at the same time, showing how language and culture can cross borders, represented in my design by the black margins in the cover.